Emotional stability refers to a person’s ability to remain stable and balanced. Having emotional stability means that you can withstand the whirlwind that life throws your way, and still be productive and capable through it.  Emotions are so powerful that they influence your thoughts, decisions, and actions.

Simply put, if you aren’t emotionally stable, life will be difficult.  Emotional stability is vital to a good life because without it, you are prone to emotional breakdowns, which can spiral and ruin a season (or more) of your life. Emotional stability is being able to take a punch, stay grounded, and not panic.

 

3 Keys to Emotional Stability

Emotional stability is similar to resilience as both terms involve being able to withstand hardship. When you lose your balance because you aren’t emotionally stable, you’re at greater risk of getting knocked down and out.

 

Here’s how to keep your composure when life gets tough.

 

1. Adjust Your Perspective

 

Something bad has just happened. Your car broke down. You fractured your foot.  Our immediate emotional response to negative life events is often stronger and more negatively charged than it needs to be. That’s because we rarely expect things to go wrong in any given moment, but they sometimes do. To counteract this, I recommend a perspective shift, which might look something like this.

• Your car broke down: Only 10–20% of people in the world even own a car. You’re very fortunate to even have a car! Of those who own cars, many others have surely had worse and more inconvenient breakdowns. Plus, it can be fixed. This incident is not as terrible as it feels right now.

• You fractured your foot: Hey, fractures can heal! Plus, you finally have a legitimate excuse to binge on that TV series. You also have time to catch up on your reading backlog and write that novel. A healthy foot beats an injured foot, but there are still positives to consider!

 

Every situation has many possible perspectives. I think by default we tend to pick the worst one because negative events bias our mind to negative thoughts about those events. But if we consider other, more positive perspectives, we can reverse this negativity cycle. Look for the positives in negative situations — they’re there!

 

Beyond the specific situation, you can always look to your foundational blessings to help balance out your emotional state. A foundational blessing is something in your life that you can always be thankful for: salvation, the goodness of God, a great family, excellent health, money in the bank, a job you love, for example. These are the blessings you can count on. Then, when life slaps you in the face, you don’t have to focus on the slap — you can look at your foundational blessings to see your life from a broader point of view. When your car breaks down, you can think about your awesome family, and suddenly, the car is more of a minor nuisance than a devastating blow.

 

2. Check Your Expectations

 

If you want to be emotionally unstable, expect your life to be a smooth ride. Life can be enjoyable, but it’s never smooth! At best, life is a highly enjoyable but turbulent adventure. Those who let the downs of life ruin their day (or year) clearly weren’t expecting a roller coaster. If you expect a calm walk in the park and find yourself on a roller coaster instead, it can be jarring and upsetting.  After all, you are on the mission field, in a different culture and society, and you can expect that uncertain and unexpected things will happen.

 

It’s not that roller coasters are so bad, it’s that you weren’t expecting one.

 

But what if you expected uncomfortable bumps, occasional downturns, and scary dips in your life? You wouldn’t need to expect or predict them at any specific time, but rather be aware that they’re common occurrences for all people. Naturally, the less surprised you are at negative events, the less emotionally reactive you’ll be when they do happen.

 

They call it rolling with the punches, and you can’t roll with a punch that catches you off guard. Emotionally stable, strong people are never shocked to see a punch come their way, and that’s why they don’t freeze lik`e a deer in the headlights when it comes.  Those who expect that life will have challenges and disappointments will be the most resilient and emotionally stable among us.

 

3. Create An Action Plan

 

If all else fails, and you’re still down emotionally, you won’t escape unless you take action. Emotional turmoil is difficult to escape sometimes because it depresses our entire system. When we feel bad, we have less energy, less motivation, less willpower, and fewer ideas.

 

While it can be difficult to do things in this state, you should still be able to start forming a plan of action. What steps can you take to improve your situation? You’ll find that simply clarifying your intent is enough to create a powerful spark inside of you that can lead to action.  Moving life forward is key to emotional health because it’s the ultimate sign that you haven’t given up. When we are inactive, we signal to ourselves and the world that we’ve given up for now. Giving up is obviously a disheartening idea, so don’t let yourself become inactive for too long after a negative event knocks you back. Small steps forward are infinitely better than no steps taken at all.

 

Much emotional health is driven by your activities. When you’re in a “down” state and you don’t do anything productive, your lack of productivity reflects your mental state and it reinforces it. When you’re in a down state and you force yourself forward anyway, your actions contradict your down mental state and a new (better) mental state is formed to align with your actions.

 

Thus, creating action plans and taking action are very helpful to reinforce your emotional health and stability. You will especially notice this benefit with exercise, as the resistance of weight or movement represents the resistance you feel in my life. It can pump you up and put you in that fighting stance!   (adapted from: https://medium.com/the-mission/3-keys-to-emotional-stability-2758d7109387)

 

Finally, turn to the Lord in difficult circumstances.  He has said “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  (Heb. 13:5) “I am with you always.” (Mt. 28:20) “The Lord is at hand.  Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything, with prayer and supplication, let your requests be made know unto God.  And the peace that passes understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6).  The fruit of the Spirit includes “self-control,” because God is in control in every situation.